


Anima Mea

by orphan_account



Series: Cavae Eques [1]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: A bit of Psychological Horror, Gen, I'm Bad At Tagging, Out of Character, a bit of body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 14:17:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17685056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Another seal undone.Makoto wonders if it was right. If any of it is right.





	1. Umbra

Makoto hates this place. The skitters and scratches of creatures lurking in the dark just beyond his lantern’s light that peeks from his cloak. Despite many frays and tatters, it has a style to it that befits the clothing suitable to someone adventuring into such a lonely underground. Why was he even journeying through this twisted place?

 

Ah, right. He isn’t a native to this place. This world.

 

He belongs to one of humans, of towering buildings in the city of Tokyo that had fallen to a despairing fate of reds and pinks. One where he was one of six sole survivors of a sadistic game of betrayal and tears, and again a survivor of another game. And yet, just as the end of his story nears, it all erupts into a world of bugs and mystery.

 

He snaps his focus to a particularly valiant enemy. A Dirtcarver, as named by the Hunter’s Journal. With a quick strike of his nail, carved and coiled by a friendlier face to keep these creatures at bay, the foe falls to its back. He grimaces at the gore and blood that mixes into orange infection, but dares not linger. Stronger foes lie behind, and in greater numbers bent on his destruction.

 

Emerging from the dark is four glaring white eyes. He narrows his own eyes, deep and dark as the night. As he nears its silhouette comes into focus, though retains its abyssal void of a body.

 

It’s small just as him, cloak slightly visible and floating in the air with the rest of it. Tendrils make up the lower half, and a smooth skull that turns left and right. An arched pair of horns in the shape of his human hairstyle sit tall atop its head, almost as if it were a crown. It floats aimlessly, looking around until a rock is kicked off.

 

It twists around and screeches, voice in a mocking, distorted version of his own. He jumps at it, swiftly dodging its slash of its own nail and hitting it with a great slash. It explodes in black orbs, which merge into his own body. He gags at the feeling of it sliding through him before settling. He never gets used to it.

 

Tattered, almost useless wings form from the ink-like orbs, slipping through holes in his back and arching outward. He glances to them and ruffles them a bit, clenching the small claws atop them before getting up.

 

If he could speak it would come as a little less broken, a little less numb. But this world did not grace him with voice and breath, only eyes that gaze to other souls unfazed. With a quick dismissal of those thoughts, he continues on.


	2. Intrabit

Naegi internally curses those villagers, though he can’t help but feel a ting of sympathy for them. Who knows how long they’ve been there, guarding the being above. They probably couldn’t resist such a meal, despite his own size and lack of meat and blood. Though, maybe they truly are like the Watcher Knights and Uumuu, long dead creatures given life by mindless infection.

 

As he gets closer to her, a feeling rises within him. A hard to place one, foreign and new. Each weaver he strikes down as he gets closer and closer sends a shiver down his spine as he continues on. Until finally, he spots her.

 

Calm and serene as can be, the Dreamer sleeps upon a large slab of stone thrice his size. He can sense though, that she has long emptied of soul. Only a dream within a preserved husk.

 

His claws scratch at his nail in a strange bout of anticipation. That unplaceable feeling fills him. Excitement, thrill. Primal in nature yet a tempting sense.

 

A slow drag of claws across her skin, the body smooth and plump from a long and comfortable life. He craves so badly, to toss aside the outside. To tear through such a tender soul and taste the being that lingers within. Take a glimpse at something of an ancient world he knows so little of, yet has been taken by so much. A deep-rooted lust for chaos that threatens his actions. As if it were...

 

He struggles down the thoughts and charges his nail, the flaring pink weapon piercing past the deepest of her dreams. Orange flicks away from the edges of his vision as he feels his consciousness dissolve into dreams.


	3. Avis Nidum Suum

He gets up slowly, met with an endless sea of clouds and sky. His wings stretch outward with a chorus of cracks and pops before spreading to full size with a flourish. With one quick leap he glides to the platforms below. He wonders, is it her will for this path to appear before him, or his own? Does he truly hold such power over these dreams?

 

The dreamer appears before him, emerging from her shielding light and welcoming him to the last remnants of her mind. She stares silently, though no words need to be spoken. He has a mission to fulfill, and he will gladly do so. But at what cost?

 

He lowers his nail from its prepared strike. Her stare seems to go into confusion, questioning why he didn’t slaughter her like he did the other dreamers. He gazes up to her, eyes subtly narrowing at her stare.

 

“Herrah.” He starts, finding his voice within the dream. A voice that sounds young, foreign, belonging to something that exists elsewhere. An undertone of his own voice can be heard, but with a much more animalistic hiss to it that befits his form. “Why? Why do you dream?”

 

She stares for a moment, before looking to the sun that rises in the endless horizon. “...Bound... For brood... For child...” Her voice is hushed, as if it pains her to speak. “...Fair bargain made...”

 

“A bargain? Of what?” His voice is forceful and powerful, filled with his experience within these dark abandoned caverns.

 

She doesn’t glance back to him. “...Give all...”

 

“...For her...” The knight tightens his grip on his nail.

 

“For her...” With each strike more blood, milky white and imbued with rotting power, pours from her delicate skin. The dream begins to fray, torn by its seams.

 

“For her...” Her voice echoes within his mind and merges to his own as he ends her soul’s long duty.

 

The mask, black and white shining with radiance, falls to the ground and breaks, the pieces falling to oblivion.


	4. Mater

He awakens beside the slab, now empty of the being that once lied there. He gathers his strength and gets up with slow, heavy steps. There, just across from him, sits her, Mist. Is she his ally here too? A rival? But what do they rival for?

 

She twitches, clutches slightly at her needle and looks to him. “So you've slain the Beast... and you head towards that fated goal.” Her voice is yet again familiar, of a detective clothed in purple and wearing studded leather gloves to cover her scars. “I'd not have obstructed this happening, but it caused me some pain to knowingly stand idle.”

 

It pains him as well, to see his friend, one of the few surviving of that tragedy, taken with him to this damned place. He wishes to cry, to scream at whatever god took their souls and placed them in this hellish land. But the god was clever, clever enough to limit his actions and force him to conform to his role here, just as her. Just as fourteen other students, dead and alive.

 

She shifts under his empty stare. “...What? You might think me stern but I'm not completely cold.” He knows. Knows too well.

 

“We do not choose our mothers, or the circumstance into which we are born. Despite all the ills of this world, I'm thankful for the life she granted me.” Why? Why did they take her will and mangle it to this? To a being far different in her origin yet so similar?

 

Her features seem to soften, her lilac cloth shifting as her needle and thread fall slack in her hands. “Leave me now, ghost. Allow me a moment alone before this bedchamber becomes forever a shrine.”

 

He takes his leave to mourn her mother’s second death within her soul’s life. He follows the tug at his soul, traveling to a place of living moss.


End file.
